Père Lachaise is the largest cemetery in Paris, and one of the most famous cemeteries in the world. Pere-Lachaise Cemetery is reputed to be the most visited cemetery in the world, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors a year to the grave sites of artists and writers. The cemetery is a veritable roll-call of the great and good who have illuminated all facets of French and Parisian life over the past 200 years or so. It is also the location of five Great War memorials.
It was established in 1804, where cemeteries had been banned in 1786 after the shutting down of the Cimetière des Innocents, on the fringe of Les Halles food market, on the grounds that it presented a health hazard. Several new cemeteries replaced all the Parisian ones, outside the precincts of the capital, in the early 19th century, Cimetière de Montmartre in the north, Le Père Lachaise in the east and Cimetière de Montparnasse in the south. At the heart of the city, and today, sitting in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, is Cimetière de Passy.
The name has its origins in Père François de La Chaise (1624 - 1709). He was the confessor of Louis XIV, and lived in the Jesuit house rebuilt in 1682 on the site of the chapel. The property, situated on the side of a hill from which the king, during the Fronde, watched skirmishing between the Condé and Turenne, was bought by the city in 1804 and laid out by Brongniart, and later extended.
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The first interments were those of La Fontaine and Molière, whose remains were transferred here in 1804. The monument to the tragic lovers Pierre Abélard and Héloïse was moved here in 1817, its canopy composed of fragments of the abbey of Nogent-sur-Seine.
In the grounds there is also the Communards' Wall (French Mur des Fédérés) against which 147 communards, the leaders of the Paris Commune were shot on May 28 1871 after the fall of the commune.
Famous people buried in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery
- Antonio de La Gandara, painter
- Guillaume Apollinaire , Poet
- Honoré de Balzac , Writer
- Henri Barbusse , Writer
- Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais , Musician & more
- Vincenzo Bellini, Composer of operas
- Sarah Bernhardt , Actress
- Georges Bizet , Composer
- Alexander Brogniart, Architect
- Ettore Bugatti Car manufacturer
- Maria Callas, Opera singer
- Frédéric Chopin , Composer
- Colette , Writer
- Edouard Daladier, Statesman
- Jacques Louis David , Painter
- Paul Dukas, Composer
- Isadora Duncan, Dancer
- Paul Eluard, poet
- Max Ernst, Surrealist and Expressionist artist
- Jean de la Fontaine, Poet and writer of fables
- Stephane Grappelli, Jazz violinist
- Rene Lalique, Artist in glass
- Amedeo Modigliani , Poet
- Molière , Dramatist
- Yves Montand, Actor
- Jim Morrison , American Rock and Roll Singer
- Édith Piaf , Singer
- Christian Pineau
- Francis Poulenc, Composer
- Marcel Proust , Writer
- Georges Seurat, Artist and founder of pointillist style of post-impressionist artwork
- Gertrude Stein, Writer
- Alice B. Toklas, Writer
- Oscar Wilde , Writer
Nearest Metro: Père Lachaise (lines 2 and 3).